Not all Union soldiers who died in Maryland were buried in Maryland. Harold Scott in his book The Civil War hospitals at Cumberland and Clarysville, Maryland, (Cumberland, Maryland: H. Scott, 1995), writes of a register of patients of the General Hospital in Cumberland and Clarysville, for the period April to December 1863, which is in the National Archives. Of the 38 patients who died, 19 were taken home for burial, 4 were interred in Clarysville, 3 buried in the soldiers cemetery in Cumberland, 1 in the Cumberland Catholic cemetery and 1 in Frostburg. There was no indication of what happened to the other 10.

So the fact a Union soldier died in Maryland does not guarantee his burial in Maryland. A case in point may be Henry Eddy of Indiana. Henry Clay Eddy was born in 1843 in Big Prairie, Wayne Co., Ohio, to Augustus Eddy and Olive Sanford. The family moved to Indiana after 1850. Henry enlisted in the Union Army, serving in Company C, 152nd Regiment of the Indiana Volunteers, a company which fought in Charleston, Stevenson's Station, Summit Point and Clarksburg, WV. Henry died 21 April 1865 in the Clarysville Hospital, in Allegany County, west of Cumberland. He is not listed as being re-interred in the Antietam National Cemetery, as were some members of his company. Instead there is a monument to him in Allen Chapel Cemetery, Allen Twp, Noble Co., Indiana, next to that of his mother. This may be just a memorial to him, but it is possible that the family collected him from Clarysville, and brought him home for burial.

ID:wcac315

Notes:Thanks to Janice Peay of Utah for sharing this story and Kevin Workman of Indiana for the photographs of the memorial.

Date:2009

Collection Location:Indiana

Subject:Antietam National Cemetery; United States History, Civil War, 1861-1865, Registers of dead.